Development Update 2023 #1

Hello there. Today I'm gonna talk a bit about the development of Just Friends with you all, I also want to talk about the future after Just Friends even if it's early to think about it, and how the project will move forward.

First and foremost, thank you all for your support and care. We had so many Patrons these last three years it's insane. I want to thank you guys, no matter what tier you're in, remember you're supporting me a lot, giving me a way to survive and to express my work through my writing and coding, and I couldn't be happier for that. Thank you all.

• Now, about the project itself, we do have a roadmap for the project, but here's what I believe the game is missing:
• Immediate Sound Effects - Such as walking through solid ground, grass, or sand.
• Passive Sound Effects - Such as wind blowing, trees rustling with the wind, the waves of the sea, etc.
• The game also needs some actual music made for it, so far I'm using royalty-free music, but let's be real, it's not as good as something made for the areas, which, sadly means a lot of money, so we'll stick with the Royalty-free versions.
• The Gallery still needs to be updated and manually coded, I pretend to do more of that once we get more artwork for the game.
• There's also the third character, Johan, which is a very smart raccoon who doesn't like to be bothered unless you have a good reason to talk to him and make him open up to him. Differently from Wagner or Karnal, he's more of a closed book, but he's also the closest in personality to Aiden's he's also the youngest in the group of the three characters you can go with it, and the most complex one in storytelling. Soon his sprites will be done (and by soon I mean there are a few more sprites that need to be done before I can publish them) and with that, he'll start appearing on the game's roadmap and voting polls here on Patreon for my Tier3 and 4 patrons to vote!!! Now, I already have his neutral face and his sprite with clothes and I think I'll be uploading it for Tier 3 patrons soon. And a smaller version later on for all Tier 2 patrons to see.

I do think there are more things I can do for the game, but those are the ones I think would be the most impactful.

I also want, eventually, to update the game engine to Godot 4.0. There's not much that would change there but there's some UI enhancement and documentation enhancement that would greatly help me when I try to mess with old code for the game, because yes, if I go right now mess with code I have done two years ago it will take some time for me to figure it out what it does. Usually, I spend at least a day just reading each function to remember exactly how they work so I don't break anything, and being able to document that in a more organized way, a thing Godot 3.5 does NOT allow me to do would be awesome. But changing the engines could take AT LEAST months of work because as always they also change a LOT of the internals of how Godot works. So that's a side project for when I have the time.

Finally, you guys must be wondering how much we have left, right? Well, so far, once the Day5.JSON is done (which is Day 4 ingame), we still have three more days. Each day gets bigger with more things to do, we've got to a point where they started to walk to multiple places now. I think the first intimate scene will happen on Day 7.JSON or the 6th day in-game, with the last scene on the last day. But I will probably write something less NSFW and more wholesome by the 5th day because so far, it's very clear (at least for me, in the story-telling) that Aiden is pretty much into whatever character's route you are, and they're pretty much aware of that too. So who knows?! :D

The game has a total of 10 Day.JSON files, Day 0 is the start of the game. The playable days go from Day1.JSON Through Day7.JSON, and there are also two more days: Day 8.JSON will be the last day in the hotel, that day will be dedicated to creating massive unique routes, where you will be able to read and watch the final moments of the game based on your points with the character you have. Day 9.JSON will be the last day (it's just to organize the story really so it's easier to edit if needed) where you can read what happened a few months after the end of the game. That's more of a small epilogue where you can read Aiden's thoughts.

So, I would say, we're about 45% done for Wagner's routes, and 43% done for Karnal's routes. And soon we'll have Johan's routes too!

And to finish this little post here, what will I do about the backgrounds: Well I am studying a few possibilities right now. I can buy them, of course, which will take time because of the pricing (unless I find some cheap alternatives or make more money of course), but I'm also trying to learn 3D development and 3D modeling, I've seen some nifty 3D backgrounds I think are easily adaptable to the 2D perspective of a Visual Novel, it wouldn't break the immersion at all but it would be insanely better than waiting months for new artwork. Of course, I could, later on, just buy new backgrounds too, but the thing is: using real-world images or making them in 3D, the second one is less trouble because I won't have to fear any legal repercussions. So I'll be working on that to see if I can give you guys something eventually!

For now, that's it. I'll go back to work on Karnal's route for this month. Thank you all for your support and your time. I hope to see you all here soon in the next build release!

On a side note: I updated the baner from Patreon. Now you should see Johan there too. ;)